Do the Gods Love Their Creations?
by DezoPenguin
Summary: Countless Hunters have been called by the Dream, and the Doll has faithfully served each of them. Yet some potential sets her apart from those who came before, and which awakens a yearning the living effigy has never felt, and which sets their purposes and emotions at odds. A lore-heavy Fem!HunterXDoll romance, told in a series of vignettes. Updates Mondays and Thursdays.
1. With a Little Yharnam Blood

_A/N: This story will be a little different than most of my fanfiction. It's been a fundamental principle of my writing that, except when writing micro-length omake and character vignettes, a reader ought to be able to pick up a fanfiction story and read it without having to have read the original inspiration. That is to say, fanfiction should be like any other story, complete in and of itself, even if like any other serial fiction (such as, say, the Sherlock Holmes stories), being familiar with the larger source material helps to provide nuance, depth, and clarity._

_In this story, though, I'm pretty much assuming a familiarity with _Bloodborne_ in my audience. That's because it's not so much a complete story as it is a series of vignettes which connect to one another, but do not provide a complete step-by-step examination of the Hunter's progression through Yharnam (and progression into romance)._

_There's a lot of lore speculation throughout the story. None of it is, I think, explicitly contradicted by any part of canon lore, but a fair amount of it is "merely one interpretation"—the one that I think makes for the best story._

_Inspiration for this story comes partly from one of my requests for the amazing Studio Kawaii that serves as the illustration for this story. Basically, it was so neat that I couldn't help but keep thinking about the story that underlay the image, and, well...here it is!_

~X X X~

Blood began to trickle down the length of tubing.

"Whatever happens, you may think it all a mere bad dream."

His tone made her twitch involuntarily.

She didn't like any of it. She didn't like that they'd given her a sedative to keep her lying calm and still on the table. She didn't like the minister's tone. The implication was plain. The transfusion of Yharnam blood would be traumatic. Something about its chemistry, maybe, causing pain as it mingled with her own, as it was carried throughout her body. Burning out the disease, maybe. Or maybe something else, some other function.

She felt her eyes drifting shut.

~X X X~

The Doll raised her head. The gentle wind of the garden tugged lightly at her silver-blonde hair, brushing the strands that escaped her bonnet across her shoulders.

The Messengers were chittering with excitement.

She could feel it, too. The Presence that filled her, awake, watching, waiting.

There was another.

Yharnam blood was being ministered. A new mind was entering into communion. The chains of flesh being shown their impermanence. Communion opened the way to metamorphosis, but only the mind could guide it.

A tiny manikin-hand tugged at the Doll's skirt. She looked down at the Messenger. Childlike, yet withered and aged, its distorted face was full of excitement, beckoning her to _see_.

~X X X~

The darkness lifted, but only in a haze. Was she awake? As through a mist, she could see the ceiling of the sickroom, of the instruments of transfusion mounted above her, but they were all blurred and unclear. Was she asleep?

Her head lolled to its left as if her gaze were being pulled in that direction, drawn by some force. She could see the floorboards, now. And spreading across them…

_Blood._

Glistening red. Shining red. Too bright for the diffuse lighting. A deep, spreading crimson pool that flowed from no source, as if the floor itself was opening up and bleeding.

Yharnam blood, as dark as that which filled the transfusion reserve?

Or was it her blood, flowing out of her as the Yharnam blood flowed in?

The pool glimmered, drawing her eyes. She stared intently. What secrets would she find? She thought she could see them if she only looked deeper, dreamed deeper…

~X X X~

The wheels of Gerhman's chair creaked.

"Another one, is it?" he said. His voice was heavy. It hadn't always been like that, the Doll thought. She remembered when he had been younger. Never _young_, but not like this. He'd been ardent, and if he'd carried a sorrow with him it had at least been a strong and vibrant grief. Now, it was just weary, broken under pain and despair.

"Yes."

The Presence was strong. _She_ wanted "new blood." The Messengers felt it, too. It had been a while since a hunter had been called. And without a hunter, there was none to hunt _Her_ will. That was the bargain, Gehrman had said.

"Will they, I wonder, be hunter? Or prey?"

~X X X~

A beast.

It rose from the pool. Rags clung to its fur, strips of cloth like some remnant of civility. Animal-like muzzle thrust forward. Eyes wild with madness. This was more than mere instinct. There was something missing here. Higher thoughts, higher reasoning, all that she thought of as "humanity" had been stripped away, leaving only this seething mass of brutal, emotional violence.

It wasn't an _animal_. Animals lived out their lives, followed their instincts. The forces that drove this thing were entirely different. The burning insanity in its gaze could only come from a human mind, but one pared down, not merely "unshackled" but as if the very concept of control had been erased.

A beast.

Blood streamed from its claws as it reached towards the table, to take what was, after all, its own.

~X X X~

A beast.

A heavy sigh streamed from Gehrman's lips. The Messengers ceased to chatter. Even the weight of the Presence, its immaterial force that suffused the Dream, seemed to withdraw.

~X X X~

_No._

She didn't know where the thing had come from.

_Did one ever, in a dream?_

What were dreams, anyway, but fragments of one's own mind? And if that was so, then wasn't this beast nothing but some part of herself given substance, given form?

If so, she wanted _none_ of it.

To be human was to be of flesh. A human was not a disembodied mind. The body—its impulses—made up part of who a human was. The animal side of them that none could escape. But again, that idea as applied to the beast seemed wrong.

_Yes, that was it_. The reason for the madness in its eyes. The reason the word "animal" curdled on her tongue. It was wrong. This beast was not the degraded impulses of the flesh, but those of the _mind_.

_Her_ mind. The dark things lurking in the shadows of her thoughts. The tainted thread woven through her emotions. The corruption that was inherent in the limitations of humanity.

Staring at it, at _herself_, it _appalled _her. She wanted none of it.

_Get out of me!_

And the beast exploded in flame.

~X X X~

The Doll gasped in surprise. She had seen many, many times where Yharnam blood had brought the beast to the surface. She had seen times where the beast was weak or lacking, where it did not arise. These were suitable to become hunters, those who could bear the echoing will of the blood, at least for a time.

She had never seen the beast arise, only to be subdued through sheer force of will.

She did not know what that meant. The master of the Dream, however, seemed to understand, for the force of the Presence swelled around her. Feeling the impulse, the Messengers sank into the stump, into the swirling essence of the void from which all dreams formed. They arose within that tiny, shaped fragment, the patient's dream become Dream by Yharnam blood, and they rose up around her, peering closely, fascinated.

"Ahh," the Doll remarked, "you've found yourself a hunter."

_But what kind of hunter?_

She wanted, so much, to know more.


	2. Seek Paleblood

The patient let out a long groan as her eyes fluttered open.

Her surroundings hadn't changed. She was still in the clinic. The high ceiling, the metal table beneath her, the medical devices here and there, they were all the same. There was no sign of the little creatures that had swarmed across her, though, thankfully, and more significantly everything was sharp-edged. Though the lighting was dim, there was no more of the misty aura that had pervaded everything.

_What was that, a nightmare?_

Her thoughts, though, were still cloudy, and though the world had returned to normal, her mind felt eerily as if she were still dreaming. Memories drifted just out of reach, and she could not grasp anything earlier than placing her signature on the contract with the blood minister.

_And just where was he, anyway?_

The room was deserted. It looked as if _someone_ had been here at one time, though, for the transfusion tube had been disconnected from her arm and now dangled limply from the stand. Her left sleeve had been pushed up to the elbow, and a bandage crudely wrapped around the forearm. Had she just been allowed to sleep it off after the ministration ended, waiting for the sedative to wear off? Though from her foggy thoughts, it seemed that perhaps it hadn't, yet.

_Or was it the blood, or the dream?_

She heaved herself upright, then swung her legs off the table. Physically, at least, she felt good. That was something. She had a vague memory that this was a change, that something _had_ been wrong, that she'd come to Yharnam for…

…For what, again?

And from where?

There was a scrap of paper sitting on a chair nearby. The handwriting caught the patient's eye; it was familiar to her. Her own?

_Seek Paleblood to transcend the hunt._

The hunt? Paleblood? Words without meaning, that beckoned to her without having any coherent reality to them. She shook her head as if trying to clear it, but the mist clouding her memories could not so easily be scattered.

"All right, then," she said out loud, and was relieved to hear that her voice felt "right" to her, as she expected it to be, "let's just see if I can find someone who can explain what's going on around here."

The room had two doors; one was locked tight, doubtless leading into the inner recesses of the clinic. The patient took the other one, walking down a long, narrow flight of stairs that creaked beneath her feet, then through an antechamber into a large treatment room with many beds set out. Perhaps it was some kind of emergency room? Or a more public chamber where large groups of people with minor needs could be treated. She wasn't sure, because there was no one around, no one on the beds and no staff members.

It made more sense when she saw what _was_ there.

It was at the far end of the room, the patient's view of it initially blocked by the serried ranks of beds. A large, hideous, gray beast, crouching on all fours, its wolflike muzzle buried in a human corpse, worrying at the flesh. It looked eerily like the thing she had seen in her dream; it even looked wounded, as if burnt by acidic chemicals hurled by patients or ministers desperately trying to save their lives…or by fire.

An eerie coincidence? Or something more?

She felt her hands clench, reflexively, into fists. The fight-or-flight instinct rising up within her was automatically calling her to fight, attack, deal with the threat by destroying it. It was something new, something she now knew about herself.

_Hunt_. The word pulsed in the back of her mind. The beast was _prey_, to be chased, pursued, _slaughtered_.

Attacking the beast was madness. But she was remaining calm, somehow, when she ought to have been shaking in terror, breaking down in panic. She was in control. Control meant that she could escape.

The door, the only door, was on the far side of the beast, though. Slowly, she edged closer, barely lifting her feet so that her shoes would not click against the floorboards, hoping that none would be loose-fitting and creak, until…

_Now!_

She lunged forward, bolting past the beast. It gave a stifled growl, but she was already rushing up the short flight of stairs to the clinic door, flinging it open and rushing out into the open air, the russet light of evening bathing a half-overgrown courtyard. Behind her she heard the growl, savage and blood-lusting, yet somehow not as fierce as the one from her dream. To her right was a small gate, while in front of her was a large one that seemed to lead out to the street. With no time to choose, she sprinted forward, hoping that the streets would offer better options for escape. Hinges creaked in protest as she threw her body weight against the gate, forcing it open so she could charge through.

In front of her was a yawning overlook, a spectacular view of bridges, spires, and buildings that reared up as if clawing towards the sky but one that she had no time to appreciate. She went to her right, the only open path, then when faced with another gate—this one clearly barred on the other side—she went left around an abandoned coach.

"Beast! You foul beast!"

With reflexes she didn't know she had, the patient saw the axe hurtling towards her and dove out of its way, rolling past its wielder. Her mind had barely caught the axe and the torch—the threats—but she had the vaguest hint that something was off about the man himself. His face…a bit too hairy, perhaps? And the left arm that carried the axe was somehow out of proportion?

But any consideration of that was cut off by the sudden realization that she was facing a dead end. The overlook to her left, the end of the street dead ahead, the solid block of buildings with no doors to her right. _Trapped!_

_Wait…no…_

There was a ladder to her right—but too high, pulled up and doubled so that it was above her head, too high up even to jump for it. But there was a large lever near it, perhaps a mechanism to bring it down? Without hesitation she lunged for the lever and gave it a yank…

_Yes!_

A rattling clank of metal heralded the ladder's descent; its base thunked hard against the cobblestones. But the man with the axe was coming for her again, this time sweeping the torch in a horizontal arc. She sidestepped, swiveling to her left just out of his range and letting the wild lunge carry him half-past her, and whipped her foot up into his ribs, feeling the jolt all the way to her hip as she knocked him stumbling to the ground.

_Finish him!_ something barked within her. _Hunt!_ But she ignored the pulse of instinct, instead whirling back to the ladder, grabbing on and beginning to climb. The rungs were sound and secure beneath her hands and feet and she scaled the wall easily, knowing that the axeman would likely be right behind her. At least the beast, she was confident, wouldn't be able to follow.

Two-thirds of the way up the ladder, a terrifying scream rang out from behind her, a howl of rage and frustration that echoed out over the entire city, reverberated from the brick wall in front of her. The patient almost lost her grip, startled not so much by the surprise or the volume but in the sheer, inhuman rage concentrated into the sound, as if violent madness had been distilled down to its deepest essence and given a voice. But she kept on climbing, ascending story after story, until she pulled herself up over the edge of the roof to…

…a cobblestoned alleyway?

What kind of maddened city design was this? A towering brick building, and on top of it…more buildings? Right next to her was a tower-top, another one to the other side that carried a clock face, but ahead of her yet another building, a closed door and a barred window next to which a lamp burned red with fragrant incense. What nightmare architect had put this together?

The absurdity of it nearly made her miss the most significant element. Directly in front of her, sprouted in the midst of the street, was a lamp, about two feet tall and faintly gleaming with a pale luminescence like moonlight despite, apparently, being unlit. She took a couple of steps forward, then froze, as a pool of light opened around the lamp's base and four figures pushed up from it as if surfacing from the sea. _Just like the beast did from the pool of blood in my dream._

The dream was echoed in another way, too: the figures there were from it! The tiny, twisted manikins that had crawled across her, peered curiously at her face. But she was _awake_ now…wasn't she?

Then again, if the beast was real, then why not these creatures?

They turned to her, peering at her with distorted faces and sunken eyes. One beckoned, as if calling her.

From behind her, the patient could hear the clang of feet on the metal rungs of the ladder. The axeman was climbing after her, unwilling to give up the pursuit. She had only two options now, other than standing and fighting without a weapon: flee into the twisted streets, or give herself over to the little creatures.

"You look weird enough," she said, "but at least you're the only things I've seen so far that haven't been trying to hurt me."

She touched the lamp, sparking it alight. The radiance poured into the pool at its base, strengthening the unnatural glow. The light widened, and swallowed her.

~X X X~

"She is coming," the Doll said.

"She would, regardless. Death would have brought her to us in the end." Gehrman's voice was heavy, resigned. And of course, he was right. The patient had been chosen as a Hunter. The mark of the Dream had been placed upon her mind, claiming her. Yharnam blood had brought her into contact with the Dream, and the moon had taken her as was its right. Until that tie was severed, death would not free her consciousness from the world.

"Yes, but…does it not mean something that she came to us on her own?" That seemed important to her, somehow. That she saw the Messengers and reached out _to_ them? The Doll could not see into the waking world to know what had brought the Hunter to make that choice, but it _had_ been a choice.

A Messenger looked up at her, curiosity plain on its withered face. She thought about this, and realized that there was good reason for its curiosity. For some reason, the Doll had taken an interest in this new Hunter.

She found this unusual. She served the Hunters and assisted them to the best of her ability; such was her purpose. She was always deeply invested in their success and hoped to spare them pain. Some she liked, and some she disliked, but all of them she loved, as she imagined that a mother did her children.

This Hunter, though, had captured her interest in a different way, a way that was more…active?

How passing strange…

~X X X~

The darkness cleared again.

The patient found herself lying sprawled, face-down, on a cobbled path. The air that brushed across her was stirred by a faint breeze that carried a pervasive but not overpowering floral scent, a mysterious perfume that made her think of moon-drenched nights.

She pushed herself to her feet and looked around, curious as to where the tiny creatures had brought her. It appeared that she was in some kind of…cemetery? Certainly the stones that lined the paths _looked_ like graves. White flowers, the source of the scent, filled grassy beds, and trees overhung the wrought-iron fence. Beyond the fence, towering stone pillars seemed to claw at the sky, a sky that seemed somehow near, pressing close down upon her instead of being a vast expanse. The moon seemed impossibly huge, and she was reminded of old stories she had once heard, legends from past societies that had believed that the sky was the roof of the world, a dome on which the gods had painted the stars. She felt as if this were somehow true, and that that roof had been brought down…or she herself, this place, lifted up.

There seemed to be only one building in the cemetery. Perhaps it was a chapel, as it stood atop a small hill and seemed to have a spire. In any event, its doors stood open, so she thought she should go and see.

She was stopped, though, at the side of a small flower-bed inset in the wall that bordered the stairs up to the building. There was a woman sprawled there, her pose halfway between sitting up and lying. She wore a shawl over her blouse and a skirt that fell to ankle-length to show off surprisingly sturdy boots. Pink lace mitts left her hands bare and a flower-trimmed bonnet framed her pale face.

_She's beautiful_, the patient thought. Her skin was moonlight-on-pearl, her hair a silver-gray with hints of something brighter that would probably look like pale gold in a warmer light. Her eyes were a blue so pale that was almost colorless, but they stared at her blankly, as if unseeing…

The patient gasped, suddenly afraid that she was looking at a corpse. A moment later, she realized her mistake when she caught sight of the hand in the woman's lap: the fingers were plainly articulated. It wasn't a corpse—it wasn't a woman at all, but a life-size doll! Relief flooded her, but curiosity came yapping at its heels.

"But…why?" she murmured. "Who made you, and who abandoned you here?"

The doll, however, offered no answer. The patient half-turned, and started towards the stairs, but she kept looking back, unable to so easily pull her eyes away from this mystery.

~X X X~

"Hello, good hunter," the Doll greeted her politely, but the Hunter did not turn, did not acknowledge her words.

_She cannot see_, the Doll thought. Yharnam blood had tied her to the dream, but her eyes were yet to open to its full reality. She had seen this before, hunters who remained oblivious to her presence. Their minds could not encompass the idea of a doll that could move and talk, and so they did not see it, or her.

She wondered if, should she stretch out one articulated hand and try to touch her, if the Hunter would feel it? Or would her hand pass through her, like a ghost, with no more reality for her than a dream carried to a waking person. And yet she could see the Hunter, feel the woman's eyes on her. She wondered what it was about her that so interested the Hunter, why she did not pass the Doll by with a glance as so many who saw only the inert figure did.

She wished that she could ask these things.

~X X X~

The old man's name was Gehrman, and he called the patient a Hunter, this moonlit graveyard the Hunter's Dream.

_You've found yourself a Hunter_.

The echo of that sweet voice from her dream called out the same thing to her. From one dream to another, the same word. But maybe there was something to it. She remembered the instinct that had pulled at her when faced with the beast in the clinic treatment room, when confronted with the axe-wielding madman in the street. And the way the curved handle of the saw fit so comfortably into her hand told its own story.

"You're sure to be in a fine haze about now," Gehrman said, "but don't think too hard about it. Just go out and kill a few beasts; it's for your own good. You know, it's just what hunters do."

The patient raised an eyebrow.

"Kill beasts? What does that even mean?"

The old man shrugged, his thin shoulders barely even making his jacket move.

"Just what I said. You are a Hunter. To hunt is what you do. If there is more to the shape of the hunt, it will…come to you."

She frowned at him. It seemed pointless, even ridiculous, and yet…

_Hunter_.

The word echoed in her mind. No, more than that, it was _engraved_ there, something deeper than a mere word, like the elemental concept of it itself beat like a drum just beneath the surface of her consciousness, pulsed through her veins with every surge of her heart.

_Hunter_.

"What is this place, then?"

"It is the Workshop, where hunters once would use blood to enhance their weapons…and flesh."

_Blood again, _she thought. Yharnam blood. And that word, "paleblood," whatever that meant.

"We don't have as many tools as we once had, but you're welcome to use whatever you find." He paused, for just a moment, and then added one more sentence, in a lower, almost hesitant tone.

"Even the doll, should it please you."

Her first thought at hearing those words was not, it must be said, particularly flattering—either to herself for having the thought or to Gehrman for what it implied that _he_ meant by it. But salacious imaginings didn't really seem to be the point of what he meant. Not in that soft, almost _fearful_ tone of voice that held none of the insinuating tone that a lewd remark would have carried.

Implying that the doll was a tool, like those lying on the workbench, and that whatever use _she_ had was somehow more…threatening? Risky?...than the normal work of the hunt.

~X X X~

The Doll…one could not say _pouted_, since her porcelain lips were not articulated in such a way as to be capable of such an expression, but the emotion behind it was not too different.

Sometimes, she thought Gehrman hated her, and she didn't understand why. Hadn't he been the one to make her? To craft her limbs, her face, the delicate structure of her joints, the exact curves of her body and face, all of them made to exacting perfection? She could remember the tickle of the brush on her eyes, filling in the color _just so_, the sighs of satisfaction at work done well on this piece or that one, the look of almost manic exultation when she stood complete before him.

Yet now, he would barely speak to her, and that only when he had to. And she did not understand why.

She only hoped that the Hunter did not come to see the same thing in her, before the night of the Hunt ended and their lives parted ways once again.


	3. What New Insights Bring

_What the—?_

The lingering exultation had still been pumping through the Hunter's veins. That enormous antlered monstrosity that had leapt down onto the blocked bridge was _dead_. The mere sight of the thing had made her mind reel—the very concept that the world could include such a horror played with her fundamental understanding of reality—but she had not been consumed by the revelation. She had beaten it, not fled from the horror but faced it down, saw in hand, and slaughtered it. No matter how huge or fearsome a beast might be, at the end of the day it was still a beast, and to a hunter a beast was _prey_. A hunter must hunt, as the crow-garbed Eileen had told her!

She'd lit the lamp and let the little manikin-creatures whisk her back to the Dream, still riding high on the thrill of it, when it all was cut off sharply.

The doll was standing.

The _doll_ was _standing_.

She didn't really understand why _that_ was what gave her pause. Dreams of maddened beasts, followed by their reality, strange creatures that seemed to carry her in and out of dream-worlds, the Hunt itself, she'd taken _those_ in stride, but the idea that the doll had apparently come to life took her totally off-guard.

How? Why?

And it was no mistake, either. Gehrman hadn't just posed her in a standing position for some reason of his own. As the Hunter walked towards the workshop stairs, the doll turned her head to follow her progress.

Nor was this a person who had taken the doll's place, worn the same outfit. Just as at the first realization, she could plainly see the articulation in her fingers, and on a closer look the artificial, fleshless perfection of her face.

Approaching the doll for a better look apparently inspired her to do more than just stand.

"Hello, good hunter. I am a doll, here in this dream to look after you."

The Hunter blinked.

"You _talk_?"

The doll tipped her head to one side in an attitude of curiosity.

"Of course I talk. It would be much more difficult to perform my tasks if I were not able to speak."

"Your tasks?"

She paused, almost like a human being taking a deep breath before plunging into a speech.

"Honorable hunter, pursue the echoes of blood, and I will channel them into your strength. You will hunt beasts, and I will be here for you, to embolden your sickly spirit."

"The 'echoes of blood?' Is that what Gehrman meant when he said this workshop was a place where hunters used blood to enhance their flesh?"

"I do not think so. I believe that he was referring to things that happened long, long ago, when he himself was a hunter. Now his purpose is only to remain here and advise hunters. But I cannot be sure. I do not know what hunting was like in the waking world, before the advent of this Dream."

"I see." "_I will channel them into your strength"…is this what Gehrman meant by "using" the doll?_

"Is there anything that I can do for you?"

"Well…you could tell me your name."

~X X X~

It took the Doll by surprise. This was not the first time a Hunter had asked the question, but was the first one to begin that way, before making use of her abilities. They'd been carried along by the energy and spirit of the Hunt, it seemed to her. "Don't think about it too hard," as Gehrman had advised, and they took it to heart.

This one seemed different. Though the moon's scent clung to her and she held all the fierceness of the Hunt, there was something that wasn't the same. A mindful nature, perhaps: questioning, asking for answers? The Doll did not know, but what was plain was that this Hunter was going to continue to step beyond the norm to spark her interest

"I…do not have a name, as you think of it. I am only the Doll."

"Oh, that's too bad." She paused, then her eyes widened, just slightly, as a thought struck her. "Do you want one?"

"I do not believe it is necessary. Countless hunters have visited this dream, but I hold each in my memory as the Hunter without conflating them. The Messengers do not have names, but I can hold each little one separate in my thoughts."

"Huh? Oh, I wasn't so much asking as offering, but I guess that's an answer, too. The Doll it is. And it's not like I know a lot of different talking dolls." The Hunter rubbed the back of her head in a sheepish gesture, then combed her long hair off her face with her fingertips. Anyway, I'm Theresa. My friends call me Tera. I hope you don't mind—I mean, you're right, it's not like you'd confuse me with other hunters, but my name is one of the few things I do remember from before that transfusion."

"I understand, good hunter. I will call you Tera, if that is your wish."

"Thanks. I mean—you don't have to, if it bugs you. I know some people get a little anxious if you try to push them to be too familiar with you outside of the role of their job."

"I do not believe that I have felt that emotion," the Doll said. Even so, she was struck by a subtle warmth at the hunter's words. It pleased her, somehow, when hunters took stock of her feelings, even though she did not need such consideration to serve her purpose.

"That's good, then. So…if that's settled, could you explain how this channeling 'echoes of blood' thing works? I'm not quite sure that I understand."

"Very well. Let me stand close." She reached out and took Tera's hand; the hunter was so startled that she started to pull it back before visibly relaxing. The Doll could feel the warmth of her hand even though the thin black leather. "Now, shut your eyes…"


	4. Do Clothes Make the Woman?

Tera pulled the last button into place and stretched, shaking herself inside the heavy coat and letting the mantle fall into place around her shoulders.

"Well, what do you think?" she asked, doing a quick turn. The Messengers in the bath clapped. "Yeah, I think it's more me, too."

The sleek black hunter's outfit she'd found had been nice enough: a sturdy coat, a long cape to help shunt away blood, multiple belts to hold fabric in the right places to absorb some of the force of beast claws and hamper their slashes, while still allowing freedom of movement. But it was just a little too fancy for her. Tera was a practical person, and the coarser weave and mundane brown color of the Yharnam attire suited her better than something that she'd be willing to wear to the opera without feeling embarrassed. The sturdy coat and stout trousers and boots were definitely more her style.

She'd kept the kid leather gloves, though, with their heavy brass bracers. It was an indulgence, but she liked the way they felt. Plus she could better feel the things she touched with them than while wearing the heavier gloves that went with her new coat.

And then a blush came to her cheek, for the first thing that had crossed her mind when she'd had that thought was of the Doll kneeling before her, Tera's hand clasped between hers, so that she could feel the lines of articulation, each solid ridge marking the end of each segment, and the curves of the ball-joints filling the gaps between them.


	5. An Empty Cradle

"I wonder how far down I am?" Tera muttered under her breath as she pushed against the elaborately carved doors. After going up the elevator in a tower in Oedon Chapel, then across a bridge to another tower, then dropping down a broken ledge in that tower, going inside, and descending through the windowless shaft that was apparently its entire lower interior (maybe it had been a granary, once?), she had completely lost track of how far up she was. The fact that the Cathedral Ward was apparently perched on one side of the valley overlooking Old Yharnam and the general absurdity of Yharnam's architecture generally, with whole plazas and buildings balanced atop others, just made it all the harder to anticipate what she was getting herself into.

Even so, she wasn't expecting a garden.

All she'd seen throughout Yharnam thus far was brickwork and cobblestones. The plaza before the Church of the Good Chalice in Old Yharnam was really the only place where there'd been substantial plant life, and most of that was just scrubby grass. But when Tera pushed open the door, the change in air pressure caused a breeze to rush towards her, carrying the sweet scent of flowers.

Why that garden was accessed from a broken stub of platform in a crumbling tower, she didn't know. But then again, she didn't know what the Workshop's interior had been like in the days of Ludwig, as Gehrman had put it. The concept of _time_ seemed remarkably fluid in Yharnam. Sometimes it seemed like the time of the old hunters, the burning of Old Yharnam, and the like, had been generations ago, while other times it seemed like the entire present history of the place encompassed merely a couple of decades. And the night of the Hunt had an eerie persistence about it, as if dawn would break when the Hunt ended, not the other way around.

Tera shrugged and stepped out into the garden, getting her first good look at the place.

She did nothing else but stand, stunned, taking in every detail around her, for the next three minutes.

It was the Workshop.

It was not, she realized after a few moments, a mirror-perfect copy of the Dream. There were differences. The ritual gravestones that lined the curving path, the Messengers' tombstones that flanked the stairs, these were absent. The bath fixtures inhabited by the Messengers were likewise absent. And, of course, the surrounding area was different. The buildings of Yharnam encircled the garden fence, reared up into the skyline, not strange stone pillars and empty sky with an eerily blurred, phenomenally large moon. When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw not the extended garden of the Dream but the welcome solidity of the Healing Church Workshop tower she'd just come out from.

But the elements that _were_ still present were absolutely identical, down to the set of the last cobblestone, the last flower in each bed, and every detail of the Workshop building atop its low hill.

It was eerie. She'd been thinking of the Hunter's Dream until now as its own unique space, but now it was clear that this wasn't true. This Workshop she stood in now, in the waking world, was the reality. This was the source of the Dream, its root, and the Dream had merely copied it, then added on and extended, just as how in a true dream there would be elements of reality mingled with elements of fantasy, subtle or broad changes depending on the dream and the dreamer.

No wonder there was a walking, talking Doll in the Dream. It was, to some extent, _literally_ a dream, a realm of the mind in which all sorts of fantastic elements could freely exist. Of course, Yharnam itself contained plenty of fantastic elements of its own. The scourge of beasts, people transformed by blood into animalistic monsters, lost in their own emotions and delusions!

And of course, there was the further question: if the Hunter's Dream _was_ a dream in truth, then _who was the dreamer?_ What sort of being could dream a world that other people could walk into and out of? Who were the Messengers, who seemingly could freely move in and out of that dream and carry others with them between the worlds?

It reminded her of her thought from a few moments ago. In dreams, time moved strangely. Tera had had dreams in her life where the events had played out over long hours, even _days_ of time, and yet when she'd come to the clock had told her that far less time had played out between sleeping and waking. Something in Yharnam, she thought, was blurring the lines between dreams and reality.

_Was it the blood?_ she thought. _Or something else?_

Shaking her head, she walked on into the garden. The first thing that caught her eye was a small chest. Tera squatted down in front of it and flipped the catch so she could lift the lid.

Then she laughed.

It was the Doll's clothes.

A complete set, nonetheless! Blouse, shawl, skirt, boots, gloves, bonnet, even the brooch she wore at her throat. And normally-sized, too; these wouldn't fit the Doll, who was at least seven feet tall. These weren't for the Doll to wear, but for someone else, a human being. Maybe the Doll's creator. She wondered what kind of mania it would take to want to become that close to the creation, to transform oneself, in a way, into the Doll and feel that shared connection.

Then she couldn't help but laugh again, because really, who was she to call others "manic" on that topic? She didn't want to dress up and pretend to _be_ the Doll, but she couldn't help but admit that thoughts of the artificial woman's cool, elegant beauty had come to mind more than once during the heat of the Hunt, served as a calming beacon when the brutality of blood and beasts had threatened to overwhelm her. Or how the lightly accented voice had played across her ear, making each casual conversation into a sensuous byplay that she was quite sure was never the Doll's intent.

No, indeed, Tera was not someone who had much room to criticize the mania of others!

She went up the hill and into the workshop itself, and here at last she found significant changes. The Dream's Workshop was a living place, its fire warm, its shelves filled to overflowing with books, weapons and tools at its workbench and altar, but this workshop was long-abandoned. Dust clung to bare shelves, the ashes in the fireplace were only the long-dead ghosts of embers, and even the weapons and tools were missing. The few things that remained were conspicuous by their mere presence, open and obvious for her to see.

Most obvious of all was the doll that lay sprawled on the raised platform at the end of the room, next to the far door. She was half propped-up against the wall, one hand in her lap, and the pose was familiar. In fact, it was _exactly_ the same pose as the inert Doll had occupied in the Dream, before Tera had been able to see her move around.

Tera had a feeling that if she'd taken a measure to this doll and the Dream's Doll, she would have found that the reflection was exact to the smallest unit. That her Doll _was_ this doll, only whatever had dreamed the Hunter's Dream had likewise dreamed a Doll that could move, could walk and talk and _think_, just as how Tera's own dreams were often populated by people, some reflections of reality and some shadows built from her own imagination. The difference was that Tera's dreams were things that other people couldn't step into and interact with, whereas the Hunter's Dream appeared to exist precisely for that purpose.

She shook her head. Mysteries were getting piled upon mysteries, and regardless of Gehrman's advice to "just go out and hunt a few beasts," she found herself getting invested in figuring these things out, in learning what she had become and what she had fallen into.

With that, she turned away from the doll. Whomever had made it with such obvious, loving care, it wasn't _her_ Doll, and the other mysteries of this workshop were likely to be more compelling than a lifeless shadow.


	6. Naiveté Becomes Her

The Doll could feel it before it happened. The fabric of the Dream shifted, parted, as the Messengers opened the way, and the Hunter appeared.

It was an event that the Doll had witnessed hundreds of times before, for dozens of Hunters, but it was strange to her as well. It _felt_ different to her. In the past, she had been glad to see Hunters return, ready to step forward and offer them whatever help that she could. The desire for their success, their well-being, was part of her nature, as much a part of who she was as…as the color of her eyes.

When she felt Tera's return coming, however, there was something different about it. There was a lightness in her heart. She did not want to see her only in the hope that she could be of help, that she could fulfill her purpose. She wanted to look at Tera, to talk with her. She wanted the Hunter to linger a bit, pause on her Hunt and spend a few moments with her, and it was a desire that had nothing to do with their roles as Hunter and caretaker.

It was very curious.

"Welcome home, good hunter. What is it you desire?"

Tera grinned, half her mouth quirking upwards, and she reached out and gently tapped the Doll on the nose with one finger.

"I desire that you call me 'Tera,' remember?"

She was not the only Hunter who had requested that the Doll address them by name, but it was the first time that the request for this small intimacy had made the Doll feel a small spark of warmth.

"Yes, Tera. It is not always easy, though. I hope it does not offend?"

Tera's eyebrows went up.

"Of course not! I mean, you don't have to if you don't want to. I don't mean to force it on you or…" She broke off, obviously flustered.

"No, I do not mind." _Actually…I rather like it._ "It is only that sometimes, when I say things I have said so many times in the past, the words come to me before I remember to change them. It is easier to remember when we are just talking like this."

"So dolls have the force of habit, too, huh. Well, you absolutely don't need to worry; it doesn't offend me. It just feels a little more friendly when you use my name instead of just 'hunter,' that's all. And, well, I like how it sounds when you say it," she added with a little glance aside that seemed to denote embarrassment.

The Doll did not have a heart within her torso, but she could feel it pulse with warmth at the small sign of personal affection all the same.

"Anyway," Tera quickly rushed past the moment, "I found something when I was in the waking world this past trip." She reached into one of her coat's many pockets, and brought out a small item, a comb with a gold back, evidently meant as a lady's hair ornament. "I thought of you when I saw it, because I think it would flatter your hair color, especially in this light that makes it look that silver-gray shade." She extended her hand, the comb in her palm. "Would you like it?"

"I…thank you, Tera."

She reached out and gently plucked the ornament from Tera's hand. The Hunter was right; it very likely would flatter the Doll's hair; Tera had a good eye for such things, it seemed. She lifted it to get a better look at it, and suddenly, it felt as if something had a vice-grip on her throat. It wasn't _physical_, entirely a surge of emotion, and yet it was so overwhelming that it almost hurt.

A gift.

When had any Hunter ever thought to do that for her? She was a doll, after all, a helper and support to the Hunters, something akin to a servant. There had been those who'd offered her kind words and pleasant treatment, even offers of help, but never gifts before. Never something that was simple, impractical, even meaningless, done for no other reason than that it might make the Doll happy.

It was almost overwhelming, like being swallowed up in a tidal wave of emotion.

"What…what is this?"

And the emotion was echoed from deep within herself. Something about this comb. She saw…Gehrman, was it? His face much younger, the lines only beginning to form. Holding this in his hand while he looked down on the worktable where she lay…and a bitter sorrow in his eyes.

"I…I can't remember, only I _feel._"

So different, that faint flicker of memory, from the smile that lit Tera's face when she'd taken the comb from her hand. So different, too, from the surge of emotion that threatened to overtake her. Such a simple thing, a small gift, and yet as she held it in her hand, felt the tangible _proof_ of what it represented, that Tera would go out of her way to do something _for her_, something that was between _them_, nothing to do with the Hunt or their purpose at all…

She curled her fingers around the ornament, clutching it to her chest.

"A yearning, something I've never felt before."

She felt something wet seeping up around her eyes, and she opened them wide, in amazement.

"Tera, tell me…could this be joy?"

She brushed the liquid away from her eyes with a fingertip. The pale white fluid dried almost at once in the open air, the outer layer becoming firm, almost stone-like, tiny creases in its surface catching the moonlight with pale sparkles. Tera reached out and plucked it up between two fingers, holding it up to the light.

"I don't know," the Hunter said. "I hoped the gift would make you happy, but I never expected this kind of reaction. Moments of joy strong enough to make us cry are precious things."

"You think my tear is precious?" It seemed like a very strange idea to the Doll. She knew that her understanding of the waking world and the way humans lived was imperfect, but even so, the thought that something as ephemeral as a tear could be thought valuable seemed very naïve even to her.

"No, but I think your happiness is."


	7. Where the Heart Is

"Welcome home, good hunter—I mean, welcome home, Tera," the Doll caught herself this time. "What is it you desire?"

Tera sighed with relief.

"I already have it. I'm just happy to be back here."

The Doll tilted her head to one side.

"You are happy to be in the Dream?"

Tera ran one hand through her hair.

"Very much so." Getting kidnapped by that giant, robed stalker had thrown her for a loop. She'd blundered around in the dark underbelly of the gaol for a while, only to be grabbed by an old woman who'd savagely gouged her eye out, cackling all the while over the dying hunter. An unpleasant experience to be sure, though thankfully not permanent for either the maiming or the death, but when Tera had reawakened after her decease, it had been back in her cell, an event that had repeated itself a second time after she was jumped by a pair of the kidnappers once she exacted her revenge on the crones, and a third when she fell at the claws of the raging darkbeast that was in the hollow outside the broken back wall of the gaol. When she'd finally felled the undead horror and was greeted with the sight of the Messengers' lamp at last, she'd nearly wept in relief.

_Welcome home_, the Doll had always greeted her.

Somewhere along the way, it had come to feel like that for Tera, too. There was safety and security here, a haven away from the madness of blood and beasts.

It was funny. This place was a dream, and yet it was the waking world outside that felt like the bewildering nightmare.

If the Hunt didn't call, Tera felt that she could easily curl up before the fire with a cup of tea and start in on one of the myriad books. She wondered if, somewhere in the lost memory of her past, she'd had a place where she'd felt the same.

Thinking of the lost, empty feeling from when she'd been lying on the transfusion table, about to subject herself to Yharnam blood for the first time, she didn't think so. If she'd ever had such a thing, it was long lost.

Especially, she thought with another look at the Doll, who still seemed quite confused, there was no one waiting to greet her with an affectionate voice and an expression that didn't really need freely mobile lips to be a warm smile.


	8. Can One Not Even Dream?

Night had fallen in Yharnam. The unseen sun had at last given up its struggle, and twilight gold had faded from the sky to be replaced by cold darkness, lit only by the impossibly huge moon.

The Hunter's Dream, though, was unchanged. Though the night of the hunt advanced, the light sky and peaceful hues were absent the ominous darkness that held the waking world.

Still, the way the moon was so brilliant in the Yharnam night made Tera even more aware of its impossibly huge size here in the Dream. The moon was a tangible presence, a weight that hung over everything.

She wondered if the Doll could feel it.

The animated effigy was sitting over on the ledge where Tera had first seen her, sprawled out, before she'd originally been able to see her for her true self. Her head was bowed forward, and she didn't turn to look at Tera when she approached. For a moment, Tera was afraid that the Doll had gone back to _being_ inert for some reason, but when she bent over to get a better look the Doll lifted her head in a sharp, sudden movement unlike her usual grace and Tera jerked back in surprise.

"Oh, good hunter, I must have drifted off," she said, rising to her feet. "What is it you desire?"

"You _sleep_?" Tera yelped.

The Doll…she didn't exactly _frown_, but the expression that seemed to possess her mask-like face somehow seemed to convey that impression.

"I'm sorry; I just never imagined that a doll _could_ sleep. Though I suppose that since I've also never met a doll that can walk and talk before now, I suppose it isn't any more unusual that you would sleep, too." She grinned and added, "I suppose that if Gehrman can go off and nap now and again, it's only fair if you do as well. After all, you do far more of the work. And now I'm rambling. Anyway, I'm sorry that I woke you up."

The Doll shook her head.

"No, you should feel free to do that if you have to. My purpose is to help support you, and I cannot do that if I am asleep."

"Even so, it's still rude, and you have to let me apologize for that, even if it is necessary."

"I do?"

Tera grinned.

"Yes, you do. That's one of the rules."

"I was not aware of that. Is this a law passed by the church?"

It took a couple of seconds for Tera to realize that the Doll was actually teasing her. She wouldn't have realized it at all had there not been something like a smile playing around her lips.

Which was strange, now that she thought about it, because the Doll's mouth didn't have the degree of articulation necessary to properly smile, and yet she could recognize it. _Another eldritch insight, to recognize her emotions the same way I can see her movement?_

The thought didn't prevent her from chuckling.

"Yes, it is, a very formal one, right up there with 'thou shalt carry out horrific medical experiments.' Wait a second, though; I didn't know that you knew about the Healing Church."

The Doll nodded at her.

"Hunters have told me about the church, about the gods and their love."

"I guess they would. Being a Hunter, traveling in and out of this Dream, hunting all kinds of hideous beasts that used to be people, I can see why they'd be thinking of the gods, and maybe asking for a little divine assistance."

"But do the gods love their creations?"

"Most churches tell us that they do, from what I understand. What makes you ask?"

"I am a doll, created by you humans. But Gehrman does not seem to like me very much. He never speaks to me unless he needs me to do something, and sometimes he seems very angry. And so many of the Hunters want my help and nothing more. Some have even rendered me inert so that they could quickly get my assistance in channeling blood echoes without having to converse. Could you ever think to love me?"

_Love?_ The word crashed into Tera's brain like a thunderbolt. So many little moments throughout the night seemed to fall into place. The Doll's compelling beauty that had first caught her eye, her kindness and gentle nature that stood out so brightly against the brutality of the hunt, her shyness at facing the Doll's eyes…

And the sudden surge of protective anger at the phrase "rendered me inert." Tera could make a few guesses at what that meant, none of them in the least good. If she ever met up with _those_ hunters, she would be happy to tell them that they were no better than a beast to treat the Doll that way…and to show them what the Hunter did when faced with beasts.

_Love._

She was falling for the Doll, falling hard. Hard enough that she started to open her mouth to say so, before the Doll went on to complete her thought, and shatter Tera's heart.

"Of course, I do love you. Isn't that how you've made me?"

She'd said it so easily. There was no pause, no hesitation.

_Isn't that how you've made me?_

Love for the Hunters was inherent in her nature. Of course it must be. Why wouldn't it? To stay here in this Dream, to fulfill her purpose for night after night, year after year, never looking outside or beyond herself, surely it would take dedication beyond mere duty, even for an inhuman creation. Her "gods," her maker, would surely want that.

And too, a love of _all_ hunters. She'd spoken without rancor for Gehrman or the hunters, for those who'd wronged her. Rather, it had been straightforward, even faintly plaintive, but nonetheless with love.

She loved them _all_, much like one might love one's family if one's relationships weren't crippled by irrevocable wrongs. There could be disagreements, even dislike, but that bedrock of love lay underneath.

Whereas what Tera felt, was something very different. Something that came solely from herself, with nothing pre-existing to call it forth. And it wasn't fair to force that on the Doll, to offer what she felt in response. Would the Doll simply go along with her? Accept what she felt in the same open spirit as she accepted those other Hunters who'd "rendered her inert"?

_That_ thought made Tera's gut twist. It was far, far worse than any wrongness she'd seen in waking Yharnam.

And so she remained silent.


	9. Grant Us Eyes

"The 'Cord of the Eye,' they call it," Tera said, holding up the desiccated length of flesh.

"The markings along its length do look like eyes," the Doll remarked.

Tera nodded.

"They do, but I think that the people at Byrgenwerth who called it that meant something different. Well, at least to judge from the books I found in their lecture hall. Though it's getting confusing trying to keep straight who's doing what to whom. That lecture hall is drifting in a nightmare, now, and it has doors out to different locations miles away from each other. The scholars there are now these weird slug-creatures, but the School of Mensis is also using the place now as some kind of bridge between the waking world and the Nightmare."

She glanced at the Doll.

"I hope I'm not boring you? I mean, I'm just kind of rambling on here."

The Doll shook her head, with surprising emphasis for one normally so understated in her reactions.

"No, not at all. I enjoy listening to you talk."

"Well, if you don't mind. It helps me think if I talk out loud to someone. I think having to put it into proper words helps me to organize my thoughts, instead of having just a bunch of ideas floating around in my head."

"I'm happy to help in any way I can," the Doll said, glancing aside shyly. The expression seemed a bit out of place on a woman who was nearly a foot taller than Tera was, but she also found it endearing.

_Of course, I do love you._

Ever since the Doll had said that, Tera couldn't help but interpret her actions through that lens, to see the Doll almost as a blushing maiden. Her innocence and lack of experience of the outside world made her seem positively girlish, which in turn made it even more surprising when she revealed the depth of her knowledge of some eldritch topic that Tera could barely comprehend.

But then, an animated doll was something that couldn't happen without eldritch knowledge to begin with.

"But these cords…if I believe what I'm reading, then the scholars realized that they need three of them for…something. I found one in the abandoned workshop, and I think that was what Laurence and Gehrman used to call on whatever created this place." She glanced up at the sky. "The 'paleblood moon,' I think they called it?"

"Yes, that is one of the things they call Her, for they do not know Her name."

_Her._ Which just went to show what Tera had been thinking, about the Doll's casual knowledge of eldritch topics.

But then again, her world was this Hunter's Dream. Why wouldn't she know everything about it? If Tera's world had been so closely bounded, she knew that she would explore every inch of it, every part of its fabric.

"Iosefka…well, that fake that replaced her…had another one. She seemed to think that she was changing, somehow, that she'd had some revelation. So even one of them can do something, allow communication with the Great Ones, maybe? I don't know."

Tera sighed.

"With all that talk about 'eyes on the inside,' maybe that's why they called it the Cord of the Eye, if using it somehow gives you eyes, opens you up to see what's really there." She felt her lips quirk up in a smile. "Things like a talking doll, maybe."

~X X X~

_A/N: There's a bit of a translation issue going on with the umbilical cords. In the U.S. translation, the item is titled "One-Third of Umbilical Cord," but in the original Japanese as well as European translations, it's called the "Third Umbilical Cord." The difference is significant: in one variant the Cord is a fragment, while in the other it's an entire object (given that it's a "Third" cord we can assume that baby Great Ones have more than one umbilical cord connecting them to their mothers…). Since each individual Great One child seems to produce one such cord—we get one from Arianna's child, the one Micolash uses to contact Mergo was presumably the one from Mergo's birth, and the Fishing Hamlet expedition produced one of the others from the Orphan, probably the one eventually used in the Abandoned Workshop—we can see that the U.S. translation is flawed. As if _Bloodborne _lore wasn't obscure enough._


	10. New Insights

The Doll was missing.

Tera felt her heart leap in her chest as she realized it. Every previous time she'd come to the Dream after the Doll had awakened, she'd been in one of a very limited number of places. Most of the time she'd be standing next to the little ledge where her inert body had apparently lain. Sometimes she'd be sitting on that ledge, head bowed, for all intents and purposes looking as if she was taking a quick nap. And once in a while she'd be kneeling by that one gravestone next to the Workshop's side door, the grave that existed even in the real-world Workshop that the Dream had apparently been modeled on.

But she'd never been missing. Gehrman often was, to the point that Tera believed he spent most of his time on the other side of that one locked gate at the far end of the garden, but never, ever the Doll.

_Where is she?_

Tera sprinted up the curving stairs that led past the ritual graves, then rushed through into the side garden where Gehrman sometimes sat. The Messengers waved from their stump, and the sight of them playing in their battered top hats would have made her chuckle at any other time, but the only thing that mattered to her now was that the Doll wasn't here, either.

Was she with Gehrman? Tera didn't think the old man could easily navigate his wheelchair around the Dream, with all of the steps, so probably the Doll helped push him.

It was just so _strange_. She was always _there_, almost as much of a fixture as the graves or the Messengers' baths. Her absence left the Dream feeling…empty, as abandoned as the one in the waking world.

Tera was really starting to worry as she came out of the side garden. Maybe that was why she heard the noise—panic elevating her senses to a fever pitch. It was a faint rustling noise from her left, from _inside_ the Workshop, barely rising above the crackling of the fireplace.

How strange; she'd never been there before. Tera didn't think she could remember the Doll ever setting foot inside the Workshop building. Then again, she spent much more outside the Dream than she did inside; for all she knew the Doll spent most of her time there.

The Hunter poked her head through the door and called, "Hello?"

The Doll had been paging through a book, apparently quite intently, for when Tera spoke she gasped in surprise and spun around, clutching the book to her chest.

"I'm sorry for startling you."

The Doll half-turned away.

"It's all right, good hunter. I should have sensed your return."

"Tera, remember?"

"What?"

"Te-ra, not 'good hunter.' It not only sounds friendly, it also saves you a syllable, so it's efficient," she teased.

She came in and leaned forward, bending at the waist to get her head past the Doll's shoulders so she could look up at her.

"Hey, you're not really upset, are you?"

"N-no, I'm not," she said, but she turned again, hiding her face from Tera.

Or maybe not her face, because before the Doll turned Tera had gotten a look at the title stamped in gold foil on the book's green leather cover.

"That…is that book really called _How to Pick Up Fair Maidens_?"

The Doll did not blush, because a doll has no blood to circulate and her porcelain face no blood vessels to fill. But everything about her posture from the angle of her head to the slump of her shoulders screamed that she was utterly, ferociously embarrassed.

_Oh, gods, she's so cute._

"And is there a particular maiden that you're trying to pick up, hmm?"

Somehow, the Doll's porcelain cheeks grew even paler. Remembering the tear she'd shed, Tera realized that, contrary to what she'd just thought, the Doll actually _was_ blushing—that instead of blood lending her face a reddish tinge, it was that moon-white fluid filling in behind her face, lending it a more reflective underlayer and thus a brighter white shade.

She couldn't resist a smirk.

"I don't know very much about the waking world," the Doll said softly, "but when I think of you, Tera, it feels…different than when I think of other hunters. Of course, I loved them, just as I love you, but…there's something more. Something more precious, yet delicate and fleeting like a flower, so that it scares me that I will shatter it all unknowing."

Tera nodded. Her heart thudded in her chest. Was the Doll saying what she thought she was? Her mouth was suddenly dry; she ran her tongue around it so she could speak, choosing her words carefully.

"I think I understand. Romance can be like that, because there are so many other feelings tied up with the feeling of love. It's complex, in a way that love for, say, our family might not be."

_Not like family. Something different._

"I have been trying to think of a way to communicate this feeling to you, but I could not find the proper words. I…this is not my purpose, here in this dream, and I was not made with this knowledge."

That certainly made sense. Tera couldn't imagine that old Gehrman or the Messengers would have spent time teaching the Doll about romance! And whatever eldritch force had brought her to life would have been more concerned with giving her the ability to channel blood echoes and the like, the arcane aspects of her existence that required her presence in this Dream, not her social development.

Though Tera found it very hard to believe that past Hunters had never made advances to her before, as beautiful and sweet as she was.

But maybe that was just Tera. Her shade of that peculiar Yharnam madness to look at a doll and see a beautiful, desirable woman. A madness that she'd silenced, to return to the business of the Hunt, because it wouldn't have been fair to the Doll.

A madness, though, that the Doll was now beckoning of her own will.

She stepped closer.

"Well, let me tell you something."

She reached out, slid her arms around the Doll's waist, and turned her to face the Hunter while pulling her into an embrace.

"An excellent way to pick up fair maidens is to allow them to catch you in the middle of planning a way to capture their attention."

"Ah," the Doll sighed more than said, a happy sound. Then, after a moment more, she said, "Tera, may I try something that I read about in this book? It sounded very interesting."

"Of course. Go ahead." She wasn't quite sure what sort of pick-up technique one needed when one was already being held by the person you were trying to pick up, but it wouldn't hurt to indulge the Doll's curiosity.

"Very well."

One of the Doll's arms came around Tera's back and pulled the Hunter tightly against her so that Tera could feel the unyielding hardness of the Doll's artificial body. The other slid into Tera's hair, cupping the back of her head and gently urging her to tip it back, and the Doll bent her own face down, bringing her lips to Tera's.

The stiffness of her mouth felt strange against the Hunter's, out of place from how ghosts of memories, of kisses past and forgotten whispered to Tera how it should feel. And yet she was certain that she'd never felt anything sweeter.

The Doll's lips were cool at first, then warmed with Tera's own heat.

_Could you ever think to love me?_ Was it even said aloud, a whisper against her skin, or just a brush against her mind?

"Oh, so very much yes," Tera moaned into her lover's mouth.


	11. Shackles of the Past

"_Climb the Astral Clocktower, and kill Lady Maria."_

The Research Hall was a nightmare within a nightmare. It seemed to fill the entire rear clock tower—the one with the normal clock that showed the time of day—over the Grand Cathedral. Tera hadn't been inside the one in Yharnam; its altar was different (more like the lower, hidden altar on the elevator platform), and there was no lever to lower it. So perhaps there was no Research Hall in the waking world, only in this twisted dream.

More likely, it had just been sealed off, after whatever work had happened there was long done. The Nightmare, after all, seemed to represent the secrets of the past, rather than Yharnam's here and now. And from what Tera had seen of the Healing Church's inner workings, the horrors of the Research Hall were exactly the kind of thing that she would expect to find.

"_Ahh, Lady Maria, Lady Maria. Please. Take my hand. Please. Help me…don't let me drown…"_

The hideously bloated heads of the patients, to the point that for some they took over their entire bodies, their brains metamorphosing, perhaps even manifesting the rudiments of literal eyes within the organ, eyes that saw…what? The cosmos? The eldritch "truth"? It was a hideous testament to the secrets the Church had been pursuing, to alter humanity into something that could perceive and interact with the realm of the Great Ones.

The Old Blood, drip-fed into the veins, changed and controlled in hideous experiments. And the failures…

"_Oh, Lady Maria… Save me…please…I don't hear anything…"_

She'd seen the corpses stretched out on metal tables, hideous autopsy instruments buried in their bodies, scissors and needles and saws. Humans reduced to meat cut apart to try to discern what had gone wrong, before being disposed of.

And then there had been the greater failures, the shambling blue giants who could touch the cosmos, summon down arcane light and showers of meteors, but ultimately could do nothing more. They could hear, but they could not speak. They could open the way, but never enter. Half-formed models of the Celestial Emissaries later—she assumed later, if she was right about the timeframe—perfected by the Choir.

It made her sick. Putting them down had been a mercy—the maddened ones that flung themselves at her with violence, the ones so hopelessly mutated that they couldn't even be called human any more, but most of all the ones who wept and pleaded for someone to end their pain.

"_I have failed. Please, Lady Maria."_

The blood that spattered her heavy, coarse-woven coat weighed her down in a way that the ichor of beasts and nightmare creatures never had. Tera felt like the patients, grasping, groping for something, some comfort.

"_Go on, kill Maria atop the Astral Clocktower. She hides the real secret."_

In Yharnam, she had passed below the great clocktower from the secret chambers of the Upper Cathedral Ward and entered the Lumenflower Garden. But she had never ascended into it, did not even know how, or if, the Healing Church accessed it. Perhaps, if the Church had sealed off their own Research Hall, they had also sealed themselves off from the Clocktower?

She couldn't say. She didn't know. Tera didn't even know her own past; how could she speak definitively about Yharnam's?

But who was this Lady Maria she was to kill? Could she trust Simon, the seeming-beggar who was clearly so much more? Did he truly despise the Church's hidden misdeeds? What lay at the heart of the Nightmare? All she could do was to press on.

But did she want to?

What had Maria done, that Tera was to kill her? Simon said that she hid the "real secret." But the patients of the Research Hall cried out to her for comfort, saw her as the one whose hand brought them relief from their pain. It was so unlike the cruelty of the Church doctors to do a little thing like give poor Adeline a key so that she could at least be comforted in her suffering by the scent of flowers.

Tera didn't understand. There was a mystery there, one more to add to Yharnam's many secrets.

She set her hands flat against the two great doors and pushed with all her might, forcing her strength against the great portals, and felt the moment as their inertia was broken, and they swung wide to reveal the great, vaulted room.

No monsters leapt at her. No voice was risen in challenge. Tera stepped into a huge, empty room, her boots echoing hollowly against the weathered, ancient-seeming floorboards. The room's entire far wall was dominated by the clock face, huge and ornate with runic symbols in the place of numbers, and the light shining through the clock was so bright that at first, Tera did not see what sat in its shadow.

And then she did. A chair, high-backed like it belonged to a noble. To the left, at its occupant's right hand, an occasional table, bearing a framed picture and a cup. And in the chair, a figure, head sagging forward beneath a plumed tricorn.

_Lady Maria?_

Tera walked forward, her boot-heels clicking off the floorboards. They echoed from the cavernous ceiling, showing off the room's solemn emptiness. The place felt more like the sanctuary of the cathedral than part of a clock towers. Where were the gears, the rods, the entire mechanism? The clock face only filled the far wall like a giant window, without any apparent means of operation.

Her hand was on her sword-hilt as she approached the seated figure, ready for anything, for it to leap up and attack, or for some eldritch horror to coalesce out of the air, but no, there was nothing, nothing but the hollow silence into which her footfalls brutally intruded.

_A corpse…?_

Tera was reminded forcibly of the time when she'd first seen the Doll and mistaken her for a dead body, but this was something else entirely. Blood dripped from the body's fingertips and stained the front of her attire. _Her?_ Yes, the form was a woman's, tall and slender. With her head sagged forward, her tricorn hat veiled her features, but light-colored hair trailed along the sides of her face, painted pale gold by the aqueous light.

Tera's heart caught in her throat.

_Hair a silver-gray with hints of something brighter that would probably look like pale gold in a warmer light._

The Doll had been modeled on _someone_, hadn't she? That meticulous craftsmanship hadn't purely sprung from an artist's thoughts, had it? And that hair ornament Tera had found, so perfectly suited for tresses in that shade…

She had to _know_. And before she could even think, she was reaching out, to tip the corpse's chin back and—

A hand snapped around her wrist in a vise-grip. The body yanked her forward so that she was leaning over her, and the dead woman raised her head.

It was her.

_Her_.

"A corpse should be left well alone," this woman with the Doll's face said in the Doll's voice, that delicate accent unlike any other Tera had heard in Yharnam. Warm breath played across Tera's skin from inches away. A flick of her hand sent Tera stumbling back. There was blood flow beneath pale skin, life in eyes no longer glassy, and the suddenly-living Lady Maria rose smoothly to her feet.

"Oh, I know, how the secrets beckon so sweetly," she said.

_She guards the real secret._ Simon's words whispered in Tera's mind.

The Lady Maria she'd heard spoken of in the Research Hall was a caretaker, a kind guardian. The Doll's outfit was better fit for that woman than tricorn and stiff jacket, striped trousers and long single-shoulder cape reminiscent of Cainhurst designs.

_This_ was no caretaker. This was a _hunter. _ And Tera remembered: the grave that was the Messengers' portal from the Dream to the Nightmare was also the grave where in waking Yharnam she had found the bone of Gehrman's apprentice.

"You are a woman of many parts, Lady Maria," she murmured, raising Ludwig's sword before her, wreathed in moonlight.

Mysteries were piled upon mysteries here, revelations upon revelations.

"Only an honest death can cure you now. Liberate you from your wild curiosity."

Metal rang against metal as Lady Maria twisted to unlock her weapon, then pulled it apart, the dual blade suddenly becoming a long saber and a dagger.

~X X X~

The Doll felt her heart lighten as Tera stepped out of the pool of light. She felt so strange, so different now, and she wanted to share it.

Tera's expression was as it always was, that vivid combination of relief—of sanctuary obtained—with happiness at what she saw. But this time, it seemed brighter, more compelling, and the Doll did not think, after thinking about it for a moment, that it was at all different, but rather that _she_ was, and that she was seeing it as if a veil had fallen away from her eyes.

For the first time, she did not wait for Tera to come to her, but instead she walked down the path to meet her.

"Tera, this may sound strange, but…Have I somehow changed?"

"You don't look any different," Tera said, "but do you mean something else? You do seem a little more animated."

She nodded. "Moments ago, from some place, perhaps deep within, I sensed a liberation from heavy shackles. I feel…free, somehow. But I don't really know what that means."

Now Tera gave her a different smile, a smile that was happy not for herself but at the Doll's pleasure.

"Ahh, I think that I understand. Maybe."

"You do?"

Tera rubbed the back of her head.

"I think it might have been something that I did in the Nightmare."

"How passing strange…" Then, the Doll laughed lightly, because she was happy with this newfound feeling, and _of course_ it was something Tera had done, because wasn't that what love was supposed to be about, bringing happiness to the one a person cared for? "What was it?"

"I met a woman there. Or at least, what was left of her. I think she's actually been dead for a long time, but her spirit lived on in the Nightmare as some kind of guardian, protecting the inner reaches of the place. She tried to kill me to bar the way, but I won the fight." She sighed heavily. "It was…not easy."

"Was she a particularly difficult opponent?"

"That wasn't it. The problem was that, although she was dressed as and fought like a hunter, she looked and sounded exactly like you. It wasn't comfortable hurting someone like that, as much as I had to in order to proceed. But from what it sounds like, I'm doubly glad that I did now, because of how it helped you."

"She…looked like me, but as a hunter?"

Tera nodded.

"Her name was Lady Maria. I think she originally came from Cainhurst; there's a strong Pthumerian strain in their blood and that would explain why she was so tall and pale. And she used blood and flame arts like the Pthumerians as well, so that helps to support the connection."

The Doll wanted to giggle, much as she was interested in what she was saying. Tera was just so _cute_ when she started letting herself get carried away putting together stories about Yharnam's history. _I have changed,_ she thought, though at the same time she wasn't sure if it was because of whatever had just happened to her, or whether it was her feelings for the Hunter, so different than for the previous marked ones, that made the difference.

"She was one of the old hunters, too—she could use Quickening without any kind of tool, just all on her own. That means she was trained by Gehrman, one of his apprentices." She looked up into the Doll's eyes. "I think Gehrman made you—well, the doll in the waking world, I mean—to look like her. It can't be a coincidence that you look identical. If it was just you, then I'd think it might be just the effect of the Dream, but it's the doll in the abandoned workshop, too. A life-size, exact copy. And you sound like her."

"But I am the farthest thing from a hunter, Tera. Why would Gehrman not make me look that way, instead of like this?" She didn't really like or dislike her outfit, particularly, but she did think it suited her job, when she compared it to the many outfits the myriad Hunters had worn over the years.

"I can't really be sure, but if the Nightmare is based in truth, then what I saw in the Research Hall showed that Lady Maria worked there, in some position of authority. She seemed to be very important to the patients and looked after them. So, I think that what you're wearing now is more like what she wore in that job, not as a hunter. Maybe Gehrman liked her better that way, or maybe that was just who she was at the end, before her death. I don't know; there's a lot of that story missing. Maybe I'll learn more once I find out what it is she was protecting."

"I see." The Doll thought over what Tera had said. "So you believe that there was some tie between myself and the spirit of this Lady Maria, and when you killed her, now it is broken?"

"It's the only explanation that I have. But there's something else that I was thinking about."

"What is it?"

"Well, you're _not_ Lady Maria. You look like her, you even sound like her, but you're not her. If Gehrman built a giant life-size doll to look like her, then he must have loved her a lot—maybe a little too much, but grief can do things to a person. I think that's why he's so rude when he talks about you. Because here you are, come to life, and you're very plainly _not_ Lady Maria. You're not even a copy of her, but _yourself_, through and through."

Tera stepped closer to the Doll, and suddenly reached up and wound her arms around the Doll's neck.

"Which is exactly the way I like it," she added, before covering the Doll's lips with her own.


	12. Pray Not for My Weeping

Tera had told her that this grave had been Lady Maria's, the Doll thought as she knelt, that unlike the other graves that served as gateways to the waking world or stood in memories of those hunters who had served the Dream for a while, it had been part of the original Workshop in waking Yharnam.

Perhaps that was why the Doll felt a connection to it, a solemnity here that went beyond that which was purely of the Hunter's Dream. Or maybe it was the lingering memories, the thoughts and feelings that Gerhman had carried towards Lady Maria that had driven him to craft the Doll—and which Tera thought were the reason why Gehrman had grown so cold to her over the years. There was some tie that the Doll had carried all these years, some bond between herself and Lady Maria's soul, a tie that she had never even begun to understand until it had been severed.

Even if that bond was now broken, though, the Doll still felt like this grave was the place to kneel in prayer. It only made sense, she supposed. Regardless of how it had begun, she had her own memories of her own life.

And she wanted to pray, now. The things Tera had told her about, the Nightmares that she would be delving to the core of, they frightened her.

Logically, the Doll knew that mere death could not harm the Hunter. Her life was held in thrall to a greater force until her blood-stained task was completed. But the suffering she would undergo…for all the Hunters who had left the Dream behind, there were many others who had come to walk with haunted eyes, who felt the endless night's hunt as a shackle.

She did not want that. Above all, she did not want her lover's eyes to one day look on her as one of her jailers.

~X X X~

"O Flora, of the Moon, of the dream. O little ones, O fleeting will of the ancients… Let the hunter be safe, let her find comfort. And let this dream, her captor…foretell a pleasant awakening…Be one day a fond distant memory."

Tera shivered. When she'd first arrived back in the Dream, she'd seen the Doll kneeling at Lady Maria's grave. It wasn't the first time, and in the past she'd always risen up at once whenever Tera had approached. But this was the first time she'd spoken out loud.

The first time she'd prayed.

Prayed for _her_. For Tera's safety, for her comfort.

Any other time, the Hunter's mind would have been consumed by the question of just who the Doll was praying _to_. Who was Flora, "of the moon, of the dream"? Was it the same entity as the Third Umbilical Cord had been used to call upon, "the pale moon, which beckoned the hunters and conceived the Hunter's Dream"? A Great One she had yet to meet or hear of?

Fascinating questions, all, and the kind of thing that Tera would have eagerly delved into, quizzing the Doll for more details and probably badly testing her love's seemingly endless patience. But they were swept aside by something that pulled not at her mind, but at her heart.

_A fond, distant memory._

Tera knew that Hunters left the Dream behind. The Doll had straight-out told her about it, what the extra graves stood for. If that hadn't been enough, she'd _met_ two people in Yharnam who had once stood where she did now—Djura and Eileen, once chosen Hunters like herself.

_What happens when this night ends?_

It felt like an icy grip had closed around her heart, and the pain was worse than anything she'd felt at the claws of a beast.

_This dream, her captor_…

Had Tera _ever_ thought of it like that?

Early on in the night, she'd been surprised and confused. She could hardly be thinking of the Dream as a prison when she barely even understood her relationship to it, could she? And after that, she'd been too driven, too _interested_. Compelled by the mysteries of the plague of beasts, of the Healing Church, of the mysterious blood that, she believed, had drawn her to Yharnam, and of the Great Ones and the eldritch Truth that lurked behind these superficial elements.

And interested, too, in the beautiful helpmeet of the Hunter's Dream, in the doll somehow brought to life if one only had the eyes to see her.

"No," she whispered aloud. "No."

Tera didn't even realize that she'd moved, let alone that she'd crossed the garden. Her arms were closing around the Doll from behind as the living effigy stood, before she could even turn around. Her face pressed against the back of the Doll's shoulder from behind, and tears were blotted by her shawl.

"Tera? What is wrong?"

"Don't pray for that, please."

"I…I do not understand," she gasped.

"A 'fond, distant memory'?" She released the Doll, then turned her so she could look up directly into the other woman's eyes. "I don't want you to be nothing but memory, a sweet ghost of a dream that comes to me in the quiet shadows of night." She gripped the Doll's forearms, feeling the solidity of her construction. "I want you here, within reach. To touch, to hold, to hear your voice, to feel your eyes on me, to _love_."

"You are the Hunter, Tera," the Doll told her. "The night of the Hunt always comes to an end."

"Maybe it does. Maybe it will, and there's no way to fight it. I don't know how this place works. But I do know one thing. I know that I don't ever want to hear you _pray_ for it. Not unless…letting me go is what you want."

~X X X~

The Doll gasped.

_Does she…does she think that?_

The idea had never crossed her mind. Tera was the Hunter. Like all Hunters before her, she was bound to the Dream for the duration of the night of the Hunt. And when the Hunt ended, the Hunter was returned to the waking world, to dream only what naturally came to them. That was the nature of things. They came and went, while she and Gehrman stayed, here eternally in the service of the moon. It was all that she had known.

But humans were different. Humans had hopes, wished for things beyond them. It was why they dreamed, why their minds called for things far beyond their waking lives. And they strove for those things with all their might. It was, perhaps, why Flora contracted with humans, extended them her blessings as they did her work.

She should have considered this.

"No!" she declared. "No, Tera, that is not what I want."

The Hunter's hands slid down her arms, taking the Doll's own hands and pressing them together between hers. The Doll could feel the gentle warmth, even through Tera's gloves.

"It is what will be, that is all."

"But it's not what you wish for?"

The Doll shook her head.

"No."

"Then tell me what you do want." The corner of Tera's mouth quirked up in that little smile she had when she thought she had figured out something good was going to happen before it actually did. The Doll hoped that if she answered her, it would indeed up to that hope. "If you could have any future, what would it be?"

"I would like…" It was hard for her to even put it into words. This concept of imagining something that she knew could not happen was very hard for her, let alone picturing it in her mind. Could something that was a creation of a dream, herself have dreams of her own? "I would like…for this night to go on forever, for you to always be the Hunter, and to always come back to be with me."

The smile broke through; no longer a quirky half-twist of the lips but a beaming, almost radiant expression on Tera's face.

"Then pray for that," she said.

"But…it doesn't work like that. The night of the Hunt ends, and the Hunter is released from their service to the Dream."

"And that's why you pray."

The Doll tipped her head to the right, curious.

"I do not understand, Tera."

"We—humans—don't pray for the things that we can achieve with our own hands. We pray for the things that we _can't_ achieve, in the hope that the gods will give them to us anyway."

She stepped closer, releasing the Doll's hands with one of hers so that she could reach up and cup the Doll's cheek. Her hand was warm there, too.

"If the night ends and I am forced to wake, then I will always remember my time with you fondly. You make that prayer come true for yourself just by _being_ you; you don't need the gods for that. So pray, instead, that a memory isn't all that we'll have of each other, my love."

She stood on her tiptoes, lifting her body and leaning in so that her lips pressed against the Doll's, and this time the warmth of it was a silvery heat that flowed through her and pooled in the Doll's belly. How passing strange, she thought, that this single act could at once be deeply satisfying and yet leave her achingly unfulfilled and wanting more, much more.

She thought she understood, now, what Tera meant about prayer.


	13. Nightmares Slain

"On any other night," the Doll said about Gehrman, "he'd be restless. But on this night, he sounds so very calm." It was indeed curious. Gehrman slept often during the night of the Hunt, as if it was any ordinary night, and that sleep was plagued by nightmares that often kept him whimpering, murmuring, even crying out in his sleep. The Doll found it heart-wrenching. Early on, she'd tried various ways to attempt to ease him, from properly tucking him in to holding him while he slept to waking him when his nightmares grew to their worst. But nothing seemed to help, drawing nothing but angry snarls commanding her to leave him be. "…Perhaps something has eased his suffering."

"Perhaps something has," Tera said.

The Hunter looked tired, the Doll thought, like she'd undergone some great trial, but there was also an odd contentment in her expression.

"Do you know something about it?" the Doll deduced, tilting her head to one side in an air of curiosity. It was hard for her to convey emotions with her face, since it had very little articulation, but she had learned over the years that gestures and body language could convey quite a bit of her feelings. Though Tera seemed to be surprisingly good at reading her feelings even without that, seemingly picking up on subtle cues that she didn't even know she was giving. Or perhaps it was one of the mysteries of love, granting its own insights in the same way that even a glimmer of the eldritch truth was enough for Tera to perceive the Doll for what she was.

"I think so." Tera hopped up on the ledge where the Doll often sat to rest and patted the stones next to her. She'd actually left the Doll her usual spot, a small courtesy that touched her. The Doll settled herself, and Tera leaned up against her, resting her head on the Doll's shoulder.

"You know, you're just the right height for this."

The Doll did not think that her shoulder was particularly soft, even covered by her blouse and shawl, but Tera seemed to have her own ideas about things like that. It was interesting to her, how individual the different hunters were, and how many little things made _this_ one special to her.

"Anyway, I found the secret in the Nightmare, the one Lady Maria was guarding."

Ever since Tera had told the Doll about Maria, the Doll had not been sure what to think about the long-dead woman. She had tried her best for so long to be a help to Gehrman and the Hunters—such was, after all, her purpose—and yet very little that she did pleased the First Hunter. Phrases like "You're not what I want," thrown at her when she tried to assist made sense at last when she'd learned of Gehrman's unfulfilled love for Lady Maria. She couldn't help but be bothered; Gehrman had _made_ her, after all. He should know who she was.

But the Doll too, now, had a frame of reference for Gehrman's feelings. And she wondered if she could bring herself to be happy if someone stood before her with Tera's face and voice who was nonetheless clearly a different person. She thought that her heart might break a little more with every conversation. Especially if she knew that Tera was dead, and each moment with the duplicate was merely a reminder of how the one she yearned for was forever lost.

A shudder passed through her. Feeling it, Tera reached over and squeezed her hand. The warmth of it was comforting, chasing away the momentary fear. But the cold truth remained.

_No,_ she thought, _I do not want her to be a memory. I do not want her to leave me._

It was much easier to sympathize with Gehrman now that she understood what he had lost.

"Don't worry," Tera said. "It doesn't have anything to do with you."

_Ah_, the Doll thought. _She's mistaken my reaction as something to do with her story._ Recognizing the emotion but not its cause, since she couldn't actually see into the Doll's thoughts.

"I understand," she said.

"It happened, I think, fairly early after the Church was founded. At the least, Byrgenwerth was still an active institution and the hunters still worked with them. They went to a fishing hamlet where the Great One Kos was worshipped, and they killed her. Or maybe she was already dead; it's not entirely clear. What I found was a dream of the place, not a memory. But they experimented on the inhabitants to find out what changes close contact with Kos had brought them, and they took Kos's still-living child and killed it."

Tera's free hand clenched into a fist in her lap, and she inadvertently squeezed the Doll's hand tighter. The litany of horrors pained her, the violence inflicted on innocent victims. The Doll was glad, and genuinely surprised to find that the suffering of an inhuman creature, so different from her own kind, would still affect Tera so.

After a moment's reflection, she realized that she of all people shouldn't have surprised by that.

"That's the secret behind the Nightmare. That's the reason the Nightmare existed at all. I don't know what started it, if it was surviving villagers that called it down or if it was the wrath of Kos for what the hunters did to her followers and child—I mean, I don't think 'dead' means the same thing to Great Ones as it does for humans—or something else entirely. But the whole thing was a curse. It swallowed up almost all of the hunters from back then, and it kept doing it over time, any time they became drunk on the lust for blood. A hell of the hunters' own making, where they would endlessly hunt and suffer for eternity.

"I think that's what Lady Maria was doing, trying to make sure that the Nightmare endured forever, in some kind of expiation for her own sins. She was part of it, and it revulsed her. She threw away her swords—maybe that was when she went to the Research Hall to try to do some good, care for people, only to find that she was just prolonging their suffering more, so at last she gave herself up to be the Nightmare's guardian. Or maybe I'm just writing a story in my own head, I don't know."

"I don't really understand all of what you're saying," the Doll said, "but if you believe that is what happened, then I think you are probably right." She wished she knew more of the outside world, so that she could be of more help.

"Anyway, the problem was that the Orphan of Kos's soul was trapped, too. I mean, it was just a baby. There was nothing left of it but endless pain and rage, and it was caught up in the heart of its curse. And…I think it was tied together with Gehrman's soul too, somehow. What you said about Gehrman resting easy now…I've heard him a time or two, crying out in his sleep…and the sobs of the Orphan that I fought _were exactly the same voice_. There was a tie between that Nightmare and this Dream, and I think that when Gehrman slept, he could feel the Orphan's suffering."

"Then, how is it that he sleeps easily, now?"

"Because I broke the curse. I found the Orphan at the heart of the Nightmare. It had taken on a form that was a lot like Gehrman in a lot of ways. It looked like a withered old man, and it wielded its…well, a weapon, anyway, that was shaped like a scythe-blade on a chain, and it dodged and leapt around like a hunter. Maybe that was the scariest thing its soul could imagine, so that's what it became. And I killed it, and then I struck down what I think was the force of the grudge that held it there, whether it was Kos's or its own or that of the villagers. So at long last it can move on and find peace, and I guess Gehrman can now as well."

"I am glad."

"Yeah. I…I don't know if the blood-drunk hunters deserved what happened to them, but that child had suffered long enough."

"No, I mean that I am glad that you freed Gehrman. I do not know whether there was justice in what happened to him, but I have seen him, night after night, and I know the pain that he felt." She turned and gave Tera the closest thing she could to a smile. "I am happy that you saved him, as well."

Tera lifted her head from the Doll's shoulder and turned to look up at her.

"You really mean that, don't you?"

"Yes, of course." She found it strange that sometimes humans would say things that they did not mean. It seemed very shortsighted of them.

Tera shook her head, but there was a smile on her lips. The Doll thought she looked a little bewildered, but also affectionate.

"You really amaze me sometimes. After everything Gehrman has done, and the way he's treated _you_, you still feel that way towards him. I know what you said about you loving humans, but it's still hard for me, sometimes, to appreciate what that perspective really means."

The Doll shook her head.

"I do not think it is only that, Tera. I am not sure that I would have felt this way had I not come to learn what it means to love _one_ human."

And she offered her lover the closest thing she could to a smile.


	14. Guidance Refused

"You will be free," Gehrman's voice cracked, "of this terrible hunter's dream."

Tera glared at him.

"And what makes you think that I want that?"

He stared at her, his gaze long and measuring.

"I should have guessed it would be this way. Seeing you, the way you act with that _thing_…" he hissed.

"It isn't her fault that she's not what you wanted," Tera shot back at him. "And who are you to criticize anyone's love choices, anyway? You wanted Lady Maria, but she went and killed herself because she couldn't bear her own guilt, didn't she? You buried her in your workshop, even though she'd thrown away the tools of a hunter. Then you built yourself a doll of her, dressed up in what I'm guessing Maria wore when she worked in the Research Hall, because you couldn't let her go even _then_.

"And then when this Dream brought your doll to life, you couldn't deal with it because she's her _own_ person, not some shadow of Lady Maria!"

Tera thought of how the Doll had felt when she'd killed Maria in the Nightmare, releasing the dead hunter's soul at last.

_Liberated from heavy shackles._

Had some part of Maria clung to her? Or was it the power of Gehrman's mania investing the effigy with some kind of connection? Was it like the One Reborn, seemingly a body made as a vessel? Had that been what Gehrman expected the Dream to do, carry Maria's consciousness here and put it into the Doll?

If that had been possible, if Lady Maria hadn't already been bound to her own Dream, her own task as guardian of the heart of the Nightmare, then what of the Doll? Would she have even lived in the first place? Or would those shackles have been even heavier, made body and soul a marionette for Maria to puppet?

Her lip curled, skin crawling. There was a bit of the beast inside her, she knew, by virtue of merely being human, and the rage building at the one who would have done this to the Doll, _her_ Doll, that dreadful innocent, was easily worthy of a Gascoigne or a Laurence. More so, perhaps. for it was not a beast's mindless, mad fury, but coldly and narrowly focused.

"Do you think I have not paid?" Gehrman hissed back at her. "Caught here in this Dream for so long, watching Hunters come and go, watching them fulfill their contracts but never able to complete mine? An eternal slave to the Moon's will, yet still prey to my own sins every night? Your duty is _done_, Theresa Serin, and mine goes on and on."

His ancient, gnarled hands pressed against the rungs of his chair.

"Making you accept your end will merely be the next fragment of it!"

Impossibly, he _rose_ from his seat, standing firm on two legs. His red-lined cloak flowed around around him, his hat reared high, and he brought around from behind his back that lethal scythe, examples of which she'd seen scattered around the Workshop.

She was looking at the First Hunter, not the decayed soul that was the guide of the Dream but the man he'd been at the moment of the Dream's creation.

"It always comes down to the hunter's helper to clean up these kinds of messes," he spat at her.

Tera drew Ludwig's sword from the ties that held it across her back. She did not set it alight, however. The massive blade had shone the way for the fallen hero, but she needed no guidance from outside to know her path. The power she'd drawn from the Cords surged within her like a rising tide.

"I will not flee the Dream. I will _not _abandon her with a man who cannot stand the sight of her. I will _not_ leave her to pray at my grave like she has so many others."

The pale moon hung above them, a watchful eye, as their weapons flashed.


	15. Unwanted Beginnings

He left no body to mark his passing, did the First Hunter. Shattered into pale motes of arcane moonlight, he scattered like fireflies, then winked out.

_He'd sounded relieved_, Tera thought. The point of the holy sword was driven into the ground at her feet; she leaned with her forearms across the quillions, chest heaving for breath. Gehrman had driven her harder than any foe she'd before faced—harder, honestly, than some of the ones that had actually _killed_ her—and she couldn't help but wonder whether he'd truly given his best.

This Dream had been a prison to him, after all, a pretty cell but a cell nonetheless, one of inutterable loneliness. And that didn't even consider whatever burden he carried for his sins against the wrathful soul of Kos's child, the subtle ties that bound the two in their dreams beyond death. Freedom from the Dream was something Gehrman certainly would embrace.

Assuming, of course, that he was even _allowed_ to hold back.

He'd committed sins, but he'd also suffered for them, and now he was gone, in both the waking world and the dream, and perhaps that was the end of his penance. He'd certainly seemed to think it would be the end of Tera's if she was freed from the Hunter's Dream.

_But what now? _she asked herself. What did this mean for the Dream, for the Hunt, for herself?

It was an answer not long in coming.

Shade fell across her as the clouds grew like swirling, swelling plummets of smoke, great masses that blotted out the pale light from the sky until they covered all, and there was nothing but the crimson moon that hung in _front_ of them, casting its paleblood radiance like a baleful gaze.

And then She came.

A figure silhouetted against the moon. Narrow and spindly, with a cloud of flowing hair, two arms and two legs giving a vaguely humanoid silhouette as She stepped down from the moon.

But no, there was nothing human about Her.

Tera stood transfixed, a bird frozen in a serpent's gaze, as its feet fell among moonflowers. She felt a surge of…_something_…from the sword that she could not place. Repulsion? _Affinity?_ But it was nothing that could stand against the sheer overwhelming Presence that filled the space before her.

_O Flora, of the moon, of the dream…_

The "hair" was a sea of writing tendrils, the "face" a blank, vertical oblong with one great opening like a mouth and three smaller ones like eyes. The thinness of its body was because it _had_ no body, only a long, curving spine and razor-tipped spears of a ribcage, sharpened like fangs for there were no organs, no flesh to defend. The arms and legs were long and six-clawed, and She bent forward on all fours like the beasts that Her Presence in Yharnam called forth from the blood, beckoned in metamorphosis from the depths of the human spirit. Not like the spirits of the cosmos was She, for she acknowledged the beast within, but surpassed its limitations, went beyond, mastered it as Her strength.

Tera thought she knew Great Ones. Rom. Amygdala. Ebrietas. Mergo. The fallen Kos, whose power could curse the hunters and create the Nightmare long despite her death.

Now, standing in the Presence, she understood how the Pthumerians could build their citadels to the Great Ones' service. How Willem and Laurence and Micolash could sacrifice all that they were to reach out to them. How so many had believed that any sacrifice of their own, any plague inflicted on others, could be worth this prize.

_Hunter._

The Mark burned in her thoughts, consuming her.

The Presence reached out for her, Her great hands extending towards her, opening, curling around her. Gentle yet implacable force held her fast, lifting her off the ground, bringing Tera to Her face.

And Her will poured into her.

_Hunter_.

The blood hammered as her heart drove it through her veins.

_Hunter_.

It swelled up above her like a crashing wave.

_Hunter._

It descended, that part of herself threatening to become all.

Like a bloodied beast's claw reaching out in a dream.

And like that beast's claw it found an answer.

_Get out of me!_

Tera's will beat against Hers. It was nothing. A spark of light against a sun. The wave of a fan against a gale. A raindrop trying to drown an ocean.

Yet in its wake came something else.

Three Third Cords.

Three bonds between parent and child.

Three conduits passing on the power of a Great One to its offspring.

Three bands of eyes so she could See.

The spark of her will was the vanguard alone. In its wake swirled the vast darkness that she had brought into herself.

Against Her power even that was nothing. But as the forces clashed, it paused Her for a moment.

Forced Her to stop.

And in that moment of paralysis came exultation.

The blood beat a symphony. A transcendent joy that was as beyond humanity as Her will.

_Child._

At last, _at last_, after _so long_, a worthy vessel.

_Child._

A surrogate, well-suited to bear Her power.

And Tera understood all. The nature of the contract forged by Laurence and his associates. The Presence had given them Hunters. Hunters who could not stay dead. Hunters who could implacably fight the rising tide of beasts that no warrior, no doctor, no militia, no _hero_ could stem. It had taken Gehrman to guide them, shaped the Dream to shelter them. And in return they would give Her a…

_Child._

Doubtless Laurence had hoped it would be _him_, that he would be Her vessel, the one to pass on Her line. But he had lost, succumbed to the beast within himself.

For only one who could master the beast that lurked within every human heart could bear Her will.

The scholars of Byrgenwerth had learned of the cords, for only one who had been prepared through them could absorb Her power. But though the Church assembled them, clawed to reach them, they could never use them properly, seeing them only as beacons.

For only a Hunter could take that essence of a Great One that they offered as parent to child into themselves.

_Child._

Become the surrogate for the child She could not bear. Take into herself Her essence, and be born again in Her image.

And because a child was young and weak and helpless, there would be a Dream to serve as a shelter, a womb from which it would be born. And there would be a Caretaker. She was given shape in this Dream from Gehrman's memory, even as the shape of the Dream itself was crafted. The Doll, built with loving hands, from a mania as strong as Her desperate need for a child, dressed as Lady Maria had been dressed as she strove to bring care and kindness to the innocents of the Research Hall, though it broke her at last when they proved to be not seekers, but merely more victims.

No wonder the Presence had brought Her Caretaker forth in this form.

She would care for the Hunters as they faced their trials. And she would care for the Child until it had grown strong, ready to be born into the waking world and the greater realms of sleep alike.

Such was her purpose.

_Child._

The Presence's need sang within Tera. Take up her sword. Strike! Slay! _Hunt!_ A ritual already ancient and sacred when the Pthumerians scrabbled in the dust. Flora would fall. Theresa would rise. The line of the paleblood moon would have a new Presence.

She would be blessed beyond all of humanity, and could lead them to enlightenment or damnation as she chose.

_Child._

And she wanted none of it.

Her heart threatened to tear itself from her chest.

To cast off humanity, to ascend, to evolve, that had never been Tera's dream. She did not know why she had come to Yharnam, but she knew herself, and the mad avarice of Laurence and Willem and Micolash had never been hers. If the spirit of Byrgenwerth truly did live in her, it was only in the craving to _know_. But all she wanted for herself from that eldritch insight was the ability to take a gentle soul into her arms and press kisses against lips that were too soft for porcelain, to bank her restless fire in the hearth of the Doll's sweetness.

It was enough.

No, for her it was everything.

And in changing, she would _lose_ everything.

~X X X~

The Doll shivered beneath the red-lit clouds. She was not cold, could not _be_ cold, but she shivered anyway.

This had never happened before. Hunters had come and hunters had gone. Hunters had submitted their lives and been freed from the Dream. Sometimes they had been too corrupted by the blood, the savagery of the Hunt, and Gehrman had been forced to cut them free by force, and she had wept for them, fearing that they would find not peace but only a blood-drunk madness awaiting them.

But never before had She descended.

The Doll pressed a palm to her chest, feeling a strange ache in a heart she did not possess.

She had been certain Tera would not meekly abandon the Dream. Hadn't she sworn it to her? She had taught the Doll to feel joy. She had taught her what it meant to feel freedom. And when Gehrman's cry of defeat, that ecstasy of pain and relief, had echoed out from the garden, she had taught the Doll to hope.

But now the Presence had come, made itself manifest, and Her essence suffused Her creations. It filled the Dream to topmost, and it filled the Doll as well, awakened in her the true purpose for which she had been made. She had loved and cared for the Hunters, for they were the seedlings to be nurtured, and she would love and care for the Child that at last now could blossom.

And she wanted none of it.

_This is why you were made. This is why you have life._

But she wanted none of it.

She did not want to care for Theresa, the paleblood Child, the inheritor of the Moon. She wanted to care for Tera, with her laughing eyes and quick wit and boundless curiosity and hands that were rough and yet gentle.

_Of course, I do love you_, she had said, but in the end there was no "of course" about it. She was made to love all Hunters, _did_ love them, but this was a different love entirely. Yet another new emotion Tera had brought her, a joyous gift beyond measure.

The dance would play out for them. The Child would be born. The Doll would be Caretaker for the Child. And one day, as she had thoughtlessly prayed, the Dream would be a fond, distant memory for Theresa.

Tera had been right. Letting go was not what she wanted, and that was not for what she prayed.

~X X X~

_A/N: Obviously, the concept that the "Childhood's Beginning" ending is the Moon Presence's desired endgame is purely speculation, but it's one of those speculations that has stuck with me from my first encounters with the endings of _Bloodborne._ After all, why would the Moon Presence create the Hunter's Dream at all? Why would she choose and mark Hunters? Laurence and his "associates" beckoned it originally, but what did they have to offer her in return? Obviously a child, since, well, that's what Great Ones (at least, the singular and unique Great Ones like Oedon and Kos, the ones that some people like to call "true Great Ones" to differentiate them from entities that are still called Great Ones but are very clearly on a lower level of being like Amygdala and Ebrietas) want._

_But how is Laurence supposed to do that? He can't just hand over a random baby. And it can't be like what Yharnam did, Annelise wants to do, and Arianna inadvertently experiences, where a human woman can bear a Child of Blood for Oedon; Flora's female and the Great Ones do still seem to retain attributes of having two biological sexes despite being otherwise so alien. Like Kos, _she_ needs to be the one to bear her child._

_And so, being unable to do so, she's created a surrogate "womb" in the form of the Dream. Which, I suppose, makes the Hunters into the metaphysical "sperm" in this metaphor (which is not all that crazy—I mean, look at the illustration of the Blood Dregs that the Corruption rune lets you claim from slain hunters) to mix with the "egg" the Moon Presence provides. That the Moon Presence has to die to accomplish this may seem weird, but nature does give us a number of examples (the adult form of many insects, for example, exists only to mate, lay eggs, and die; some of them can't even eat!)._

_And if you look at "Childhood's Beginning," well, it is kind of too perfect, isn't it? There's the Dream, in which the child Great One can grow up safe—very different from a dingy sewer beneath Oedon Chapel!—and the Doll to take care of it. If the Moon Presence created the Dream, why would it be such a perfect nursery for the child unless she wanted it that way?_

_It is, again, pure speculation. There are any number of other theories out there, many of which are equally sensible and satisfying. And that's how Hidetaka Miyazaki explicitly wanted it—that the story of _Bloodborne_ is as much about what we put into it as what he does. But this, this understanding is what works for me._

_Unfortunately for Tera and the Doll, it really doesn't work for them…_


	16. Wishes Honored

The Doll raised her head. The gentle wind of the garden tugged lightly at her silver-blonde hair, brushing the strands that escaped her bonnet across her shoulders.

The Messengers were chittering with excitement.

She could feel it, too. The Presence that filled her, awake, watching, waiting.

There was another.

Yharnam blood was being ministered. A new mind was entering into communion. The chains of flesh being shown their impermanence. Communion opened the way to metamorphosis, but only the mind could guide it.

The wheels of the bath-chair creaked as she pushed it along the path. Its occupant half-turned and looked up at her, a smile on her face.

"You feel it, then?"

The Doll nodded.

"And so, the hunt begins again…" she said.

Tera chuckled.

"Time to go to work."

Fair was fair, after all. If the Moon Presence was willing to delay her desperate desire for a child for their sake, then it was only right that Tera play her part to help find that Child. And perhaps in the long run, two to raise that Child would be better than one alone.

"Indeed it is." The Doll ran one hand along the side of Tera's head, letting the Guide's hair flow between her fingers. Tera covered her hand with her own, her bare skin warm on the articulated structure. The Doll sighed in contentment. She had never had dreams of her own before the Hunt just past, and yet her newly-born wishes, like children of her own, had lived, been honored, and were growing stronger before her eyes.

For the Great Ones of the dream were sympathetic in spirit.

And some gods did, indeed, love their creations.


End file.
